Exxon Mobil Corporation | Tax Transparency Report at Exxon Mobil Corporation
How other organisations have declared their voting intentions
| Organisation name | Declared voting intentions | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Anima Sgr | For | ExxonMobil provides some information on its total tax contributions for the past three years in its Annual Report. It states that it expects it will be required by regulation to report country-by-country tax information for the U.S. and European Union countries. Hence, ExxonMobil's public tax disclosure through GRI reporting standard would address and sustain investor demands for tax transparency at the global level. |
| VidaCaixa | For | |
| Rothschild & co Asset Management | For | |
| CANDRIAM | For | At Candriam, we believe that the demand formulated by this resolution is fully aligned with our Proxy Voting Policy as it pushes for more transparency by asking for a country-by-country tax report, which enables us to ensure our investee companies pay their fair amount of tax and assess whether they are involved in aggressive tax planning. Although ExxonMobil argues that much of the asked information is already published, we believe that such a report is a negligible increased burden for the company and would only support the company’s argument that it is both collaborating with various tax authorities in the jurisdictions it operates and subject to some of the highest tax rates in the world. Especially, providing figures on its contributions on a country basis would comfort the company’s statement as well as enable shareholders to assess the risks and opportunities arising from the company’s tax practices. Candriam considers that the country-by-country reporting of information does not lead to the disclosure of sufficiently sensitive or confidential information as to confer a competitive disadvantage as also specified by the 2018 Review of the EU Commission. We believe that reporting on tax practices and providing stakeholders with more granularity on the different company’s paid taxes should not be seen as a competitive disadvantage. In contrast, we see among the company’s peers that some whose reporting is in line with GRI Tax Standard benefited from such disclosure. Finally, since coming legislation will require ExxonMobil to align with such reporting practices, taking the lead on this would help the company to gain more understanding from investors on its tax practices and on the challenges it faces. As such, we vote FOR this shareholder proposal. |
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